News & Opinion

U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Robert Wood Johnson told Sky News that, “Meeting Her Majesty is the most important thing, because she’s the head of state.”

Queen Elizabeth will meet Donald Trump during the U.S. president’s trip to the U.K., the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain has confirmed.

Robert Wood Johnson was asked by Sky News’ Kay Burley whether Trump’s itinerary would include meeting the queen.

“Yes, yes, I mean he has to see the head of state,” said Johnson. “Putting his foot on British soil, it’s job one, it’s very important, very symbolic. Meeting Her Majesty is the most important thing, because she’s the head of state, and from then on, it’ll be what the president wants to do.”

Sky News said that Trump would most likely meet the queen at Windsor Castle, as it will be closed to the public on July 13th, the day of Trump’s expected visit.

Trump is also expected to meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May, who described his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border as “deeply disturbing. This is wrong. This is not something we agree with. This is not the United Kingdom’s approach.”

However, in Parliament Wednesday, May also defended green-lighting Trump’s visit which is expected to attract widespread public protests.

“On the wider issue of the president of the United States coming here to the United Kingdom, there are many issues on which members of this house… encourage me to raise with the president of the United States. We do that,” she said.

“When we disagree with the United States we tell them so. But we also have some key shared interests with the United States, in the security and defense field and in other areas as well, and it is right that we are able to sit down and discuss those with the president of a country with which we have had a longstanding—and will continue to have a longstanding—special relationship.”

The confirmation of the royal audience came in the same week as Meghan Markle’s father Thomas told Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan that Prince Harry had told him to “give Donald Trump a chance.”

Markle told Morgan, “I sort of disagreed with that …That was his politics, I have my politics.”